Welcome to our final project! We are Macalester College students (class of 2021/2022) from the department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. We took the course, Advanced Data Science in R (STAT 494), during spring semester, 2021. Below is our final project for this course.
Computer Science is a field that is growing rapidly in the United States and around the world today. Advancements in computer science from industry are constantly being released and technology is becoming more ingrained into our daily lives. The increasing demand of computer scientists had caused the occupation to grow in popularity. To meet the demand, educational institutions and systems are increasing the amount of courses offered in order to train more future computer scientists. This development started at the college level, where majoring in computer science is becoming a widely available option. At Macalester College, it is one of the largest departments for both students and faculty. While the availability of courses at the college level is an amazing start, there is a big push to have computer sciences courses offered in K-12 education. Offering computer science courses in elementary and secondary schools provides an opportunity for kids to expose themselves to coding. This could lead younger students to discover new interests and get engaged with computer science earlier. Often, being exposed to computer science at a younger age can make students more comfortable with the material and the field later on. This can lead to a more empowered and diverse set of students entering the workforce or higher education. Given the importance of having computer science courses available in K-12 education, we decided to explore the availability of computer science courses in K-12 school districts in Minnesota. For our Advanced Data Science final project, we will explore the connection between a variety of datasets related to this topic, including K-12 computer science course availability in Minnesota, demographic information from the U.S. census, ACT scores, and funding.
To begin with, let’s explore what computer science course availability already exists in the state of Minnesota for K-12 education. The two plots below show the various public school districts in the state with the amount and variety of computer science courses offered in each district.
These plotly maps are an interactive tool that both visually and textually shows important information. You can hover over a district and a text box will appear with relevant information, making for an easy comparison between districts.
Due to the fact that public schools are funded by property taxes, course availability is usually an intersectional issue that is reliant on other factors. We hypothesized that there would be a correlation between course availability and overall wealth and access to resources of each district. In this section, we explore some of the variables we expected to be significant in relation to course availability.
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Now that we have introduced you to our various datasets, we will show you how these connect and see if there is a correlation between course availability and demographic variables, ACT scores, and funding.
Both maps include the district population and name, and either the number of total computer science courses offered or the number of computer science course categories offered. The first map in addition includes the median household income, percentage of white people, and average ACT score whereas the second map includes the total revenue and total spending per pupil. These maps also use plotly, so you can use the hover feature to view the variable information.